For all its humor and moments of warmth, The Hive is a portrait of misery.
Rather than gods atop Mount Olympus, the engine of dramatic irony may well be the voice of bitter experience.
Dear Outsiders – Jenny Sadre-Orafai
Who lives in the beach town we visit every summer? Who works in, walks by, or rages at the souvenir shops?
Elixir reminds us of the fullness of life, of melody, never a straight line, but rather a round, a chorus joyfully repeated again and again.
Saudade for a Breaking Heart – Kristen Lucia Renzi
We cannot fully know saudade until our bodies experience pleasure’s phantom pangs.
No Way in the Skin without This Bloody Embrace – Jean D’Amérique
. . . like something out of Ŝvankmajer: a tongue torn out and dragging itself along in search of contact and reintegration, streaking blood in its wake.
Singer Distance – Ethan Chatagnier
Having self-elected into the contact genre, Chatagnier redirects Singer Distance away from the alien essence of this story form, suggesting that earthly issues more deserve our attention.
Baron Bagge – Alexander Lernet-Holenia
It’s unclear (even to Bagge himself) if he is in a state of post-traumatic shock or whether he has even survived the battle.
The Speak Angel Series – Alice Notley
Published this year by Fonograf Editions alongside a collection of reissues entitled Early Works, this volume continues, and perhaps culminates, the visionary-epic line of Notley’s work.
No matter how profoundly the rapist’s actions affected the victim, the man himself, separated from that act, is nothing. Or not much, anyway. A boring man in a boring ranch house.